ohhh I love this!!! I think the lighting is just right for this setting, especially the candlelight, really nice atmosphere. Now, it looks like Bulldow needs to work on his manners, lol...I would really like to know what he said!

p.s. will get back to you soon, but yes, you can definitely count on more Tabby & Xerr!!! Actually, I have yet to try them in Poser so once I am done with Rodrigo & the puppy series I might actually do that!

Thank you for the comment! I have another WIP scene that features Tsathoggua, Suijin, and Xerr at a tavern, and now I'm imagining them talking about Bulldow's etiquette breach on the night depicted above! Maybe he needs a friend like Tabby to teach him better manners :-)

Yes, I would not go into his corner for love nor money! LOL! A rather fearsome character especially in this light. But then, for the times, it was likely the only lighting available! Excellent work on this character and scene my friend! Many fine kudos!

He's really a rather good natured fellow, but sometimes he speaks his mind a bit too freely :-)

Super scene! Gfeat character,

Maybe Bulldow drank his companion under the table. We just don't see the companion. :)

Wonderful scene and lighting for this dude. I had never heard of him til I saw renders by you of him. You do him justice :)

Aw, thanks :-) I love creatures that might plausibly be good natured, like Bulldow and Xerr. I ran him through EZSkin and he immediately looked more friendly :-)

I like this a lot. Had me giggling as I read the story for it. As for the lighting challenge I'm pretty crappy with dimly lit scenes so I'm impressed! XD Did you only use ambient light settings for the candles and render with IDL? That used to be rough on my machine's processor. In such a setting I would cheat and use some point light sources parented to the candles to avoid using IDL. How I miss Firefly ;-D. Firefly gives such beautiful results but you have to know what you're doing... >.<

Thanks for sharing it, Amy! =)

Molly

Thanks, Molly! I rarely render with IDL enabled b/c it can be slow and it can produce mystery blotches. I typically only use it when I want a mesh to act as an emitter, the way Kellie's recent image has the "magic jug" lighting the scene. After doing a bunch of tests, I found that putting an HDRI on an IBL light, set to around 40-60% intensity (with AO enabled), works about as well as rendering with that same HDRI on an envirosphere and rendering with IDL enabled. In other words, the resulting environmental lighting is about the same, at least for my purposes. I also tested out whether it mattered if the image I put on the IBL light was mapped as a light probe, and it does not. The only things that really seem to matter are setting the gamma correction of an HDRI to 1 and setting the IBL contrast to 3 -- and using a very high contrast HDRI.

For this scene, I have an HDRI of a wood room with a fireplace in it on an IBL light, set to around 44% (w/ AO enabled). On each candle, I have two point lights: one to provide the intense brightness right at the flame and another a bit higher, to spread the light a bit further. I don't always need to use two point lights per candle, but for this scene I did.

The intense brightness comes from having attenuation set to inverse square, but to mitigate the "blown out" look that kind of light can produce (and does produce in preview), I attach an Edge_Blend node to the Color and Diffuse chips, with the inner color set to a candlelight orange and the outer color set to the same hue but much darker. The other point light is set to inverse linear and has a candlelight orange color w/ no Edge_Blend node. Both are set around 12% intensity.

When lighting dark scenes, I had a bit of an "ah ha" moment when it comes to following the guideline that all scene lighting should add up to around 100% intensity. I couldn't figure out how you could do that and produce the darkness of night, until I realized that I didn't need to lower intensity to get darkness, I just needed to use a darker color.

Granted, everything I've said above applies to Firefly. I have no idea if it applies to Superfly!

Great lighting! Reminds me of cantina scene in Star Wars!

Thanks for the comment! Now you've got that cantina music in my head (which is all the more impressive given that I just returned from seeing the musical Hamilton in Denver, so that music WAS in my head until just now :-)

Wonderful atmosphere, great narrative illustration

Oh poor guy needs a friend. Excellent job on lighting and setting the mood

I think he may have just offended his only friend and is thus left forlorn, to drink alone! Thanks for the comment :-)

i thought that creature was Xerr at first, cool beast and textures.

Perhaps it was Xerr he inadvertently offended, leaving him to drink alone! I do have Xerr, and he is currently sitting in a tavern awaiting my attention, but it's a different tavern, with different beastly companions :-)

Your lighting in this scene is fantastic! It really sets a mood & that character is wonderful!

Thank you! I explained the lighting in more depth than anyone wants in my reply to Molly's comment, but I forgot to add another often overlooked element of lighting: I had to adjust the specular settings on the tavern prop's materials so that they'd respond to light in the way I wanted. I also ran Bulldow through EZSkin and rendered with SSS enabled, which helps how the light hits his surfaces as well. (I run just about everything with surfaces resembling skin through EZSkin, even if I'm not going to render with SSS enabled, b/c I love the specular settings it produces!)

A towering figure with a touching expression! Superbly done scene!

Thanks so much for the comment! Bulldow doesn't have a lot of options for expressions, but I did my best to come up with a forlorn look, and I'm glad you noticed that :-)

Wonderful lighting and render.... great scene !!

I can see why he drinks alone! Very nice lighting! You are a fountain of information!

He's really a rather charming fellow, but he does sometimes put his foot in his mouth! Thanks for the comment! As for the fountain of information, I confess that I'm a retired university instructor who loves Poser and sometimes can't resist the urge to try and share what I've learned with others who might find it useful! After all, I wouldn't have learned as much as I have if others hadn't so freely shared their knowledge over the years :-)

Great character and scene!

on the up side.... the beer in his former companion's goblet is paid for! Super image!!

Your work is so fun to view. I will be back with more comments soon. A gallery that is a total joy to view.